Pages

Tuesday, 21 March 2017

New Teacher for Alex

Over the March Break, Alex's teacher had to go on early maternity leave. So now he has a new teacher, which is frankly leaving Dave and I more than a little nervous.Obviously it's not anything that anyone can control, but the timing is particularly bad. We just managed to get the school on board about the head-banging and now we have someone new. With less than two weeks of everyone agreeing that ignoring the head-banging is best, we now could be back at square one, having to explain what "ignore" actually means and deal with inadvertent reinforcement.Add into that, Alex is going to be in recovery mode from the trip and now he has a new person whose boundaries he's going to test. That means an increase in problem behaviours regardless of other factors.And for even more stress, the dog will be arriving just as the initial bubbles of behaviour spikes will be starting to go down. Adding a new complication.Alex just can't seem to catch a break this year. From the other family who held onto their spot and messed up the start of his year by forcing a switch in the first week, to the driver and her unjustified restraints, to the inconsistent expectations in the first few months, it's all been a lot for him to deal with so far. And for us to deal with, too.It's incredibly frustrating to continually get hit by these things which are out of our control. We are doing our best to be pro-active, we're working with everyone and still, it's not enough. Alex has had huge backslides in toileting and behaviour from this time last year.I know that most of this hasn't been malicious (with the exception of the driver and possibly the family who insisted on holding two school spots for over 6 months), but it sure feels targeted.